Call a url from javascript

Question

Is there a way to call a url and get a response using javascript? I need the equivalent of ASP.NET:

WebRequest req = HttpWebRequest.Create("http://someurl.com");
WebResponse webResponse = req.GetResponse();

I have an external url that holds some information I need and I want to call this url from javascript and parse the response in order to determine what to do in my application.

Answer 1

You can make an AJAX request if the url is in the same domain, e.g., same host different application. If so, I'd probably use a framework like jQuery, most likely the get method.

$.get('http://someurl.com',function(data,status) {
      ...parse the data...
},'html');

If you run into cross domain issues, then your best bet is to create a server-side action that proxies the request for you. Do your request to your server using AJAX, have the server request and return the response from the external host.

Thanks to@nickf, for pointing out the obvious problem with my original solution if the url is in a different domain.